....and a river runs through it....

My favourite kind of Vancouver Island day greeted me this morning as I slipped out of the bed before everyone else to be the first into the shower.  The dew on the grass was thick and chilly and made me double-check to make sure I wasn't looking at frost.  But no.....the sun coming through the trees and the smell of the air as I let the puppy out the back door to greet our big dog just waking up from her front porch bed reminded me that we're still in September. 
September smells are crisp, cinnamon-coloured leaves falling from the maple tree out back; woodstove-smoke curling up through the cedar and pine trees in the early morning and early evening hours; soup simmering on the stove; soccer gear drying in the mud room, the smell of wet straw wafting out of the goat pen. 
September is new school supplies and clean white socks fresh out of the package.  It is the promise of a new year, a new chance, a new beginning.  The feel of autumn pulls me in more so than any other season on the calendar.  I always thought I was more a summer child, being born in July and all, but it is Fall in all its glorious colours and possibilities that I love most.  Trees and flowers are dying away, the apple trees are picked and jellied, the harvest is here, pumpkins are ripe, scarecrows are wearing fresh corn husks, herbs are drying, pantry shelves are filled with canned peaches and crabapple jelly. 
There is death in this season but in that death there is the reminder that the wheel keeps turning, the circle remains unbroken.  The leaves on the ground will nourish the soil over winter and keep the spring bulbs warm under the depths.  The apple trees will rest and look proudly on over the cold, wet winter as I spread apple lime jelly on my toast as I wait for my tea to brew. 
The September sun is the earth's last showing of warmth before the darkness of winter rolls in and makes the days shorter and the nights longer.  The sun is showing off one last time this month before the frost shows up close to Halloween. 
The September sun speaks to me somehow, soothing my fear of darkness and chill, with a soft message on the autumn wind of "this too......shall pass". 

Baby it's cool outside....

So tonight was Meet the Teacher night at my son's high school.  You know the event.  First of the year...parents go to the school and get a chance to walk through their child's timetable, go class to class, walk the halls of a teenager for a night.  Meet face to face with the teachers who spend more time with my son than I do during the day, have a glimpse of the hallways where he hangs with his friends, check out where his locker is located, inhale the odour that is high school.  Old textbooks, gymnasium floors, hallway posters (Don't forget....September 23rd is the Terry Fox Run...BE there!), walls of fading grad class photos from the early eighties and onward, the main office with cheery fake flowers and motivational phrases (Just because you've lost doesn't mean you quit.....it means you try again).
High school in 2010 smells and looks the same as it did in 1984, although in the eighties the aroma was more about Love's Baby Soft for girls than Axe Body Spray for guys, and from where I stand the same rules apply.  Cool is cool no matter which generation defines it. 
I still have moments where I think I might be cool.  My friends think I'm cool but then....I happen to think I have cool friends so it would stand to reason they think the same of me.  I know my sixteen year old doesn't think I'm so cool, but then I'm pretty sure that's how it should be, because for my son to think I'm cool would probably mean I'm buying him alcohol and letting him stay out as late as he wants wherever he wants. 
But I do have moments where for a spit-second I notice him looking at me and realizing that I just might have been sixteen once.  But then his I-phone will blink a text at him and the moment passes....but I know I had that moment.  I'm sure of it.
Sitting in the quiet of the multi-purpose room tonight --I had snuck in before the principal, staff and other parents arrived for the official greeting--I found a peaceful and solitary spot to sit and nurse my five month old daughter and felt anything but cool.  She had been fussing in my arms as I stood in the hallway  chatting with my son's soccer coach and I had excused myself to find a quiet corner. 
I had just sat her up from my left side, her chubby cheeks pink and glowing, her eyes glassy and warmed, when the room started to fill and I quickly tucked everything back where it should be. 
One mother, her son graduating this year, rushed over from her seat on the other side of the room to sit beside me and breathe in my baby's face and smell. 
"I'm just drawn to her," she gushes to me. "She's just so beautiful."
Yes..she is...but then all babies are especially, I think, to anyone who has carried one, birthed one, raised one, and is now dwarfed by one.  My oldest baby is 6'2, my youngest can fit in the crook of my arm, my middle boy still holding my hand to cross the street.  My oldest gave me a hug tonight before heading up the stairs to bed, his colourful descriptions of his new Halo videogame scrambling around my brain, and my head fit perfectly under his chin.  His arms went around and over my shoulders and I was struck, as I often am these days, that this young man is my child. 
It used to make me sad, melancholy, achy for that little boy he used to be.  But I find myself shifting gears as he begins Grade 11, wishing him nothing but safety and joy, happy for him for the good times that lay ahead these last two years of high school. 
"I have no idea what I want to do," he worries out loud to me just yesterday. "All I know is I don't want to just wait around for something exciting to happen to me."
"Good for you," I hear myself answering because...really...I'm glad he feels that way.  I'm relieved he's not perfectly clear on what he wants to 'be'.  The world is a huge place, a wondrous place, and I wish for him, for all three of my children, nothing more than happiness and peace wherever and whatever he decides to do.  It's the best advice I can give him really.....find something you love to do and do it well.....and though it may sound like a cheesy Hallmark card guess what? 

I'm cool with that........
This week marks my little lad's first days of Preschool and I hear him talking to his big brother.
"I have a big-boy backpack like you Doh"," he says from his booster seat in the car.  'Doh' is the name my four year old uses for his big brother. He uses his real name too but 'Doh' is the name he came up with when he was just learning to talk so 'Doh' has stuck. 
'You DO?" my big lad gushes to his little brother. "Just like mine?"
"Yup," my wee lad nods.  "Just like you."
My big son's response is all I could hope for.
"Cool," he says.
Sure is............until next time....

As the Crow Flies.....

So.....we live on almost four acres out here in our little piece of Vancouver Island paradise.  The trees surround our property and a long dirt driveway connects us to the end of the long dirt road our property rests on.  The brush that surrounds our house and front/back yards is typical to what one sees when travelling on this Island.  Salal, blackberry vines, huckleberry and salmonberry bushes, ferns and of course....scotch broom....all of which our four goats love to feast on so apart from their fenced off portion of our property which is stripped clean to the bark of the trees that remain.....we are surrounded by lush, green coastal foilage.
It makes for a beautiful scene out of any of the windows of our house.....my favourite being the one I'm viewing now from the corner of my eye just a blink up and over my computer screen.  My middle child, my little four year old son, has known no other view from the porch other than this one and my baby daughter will be in the same boat.  My oldest, who at sixteen spent the first eight years of his life in basement suites and questionable apartments with his mother while she struggled to make those long ends meet, knows how lucky he is to be able to crank up his stereo pretty much as loud as he wants and bother nobody but the birds perched on the wisteria branches just outside his teenager-shack window at the time.
My kids are livin' in the country and I like that just fine.  Both boys can identify, and imitate,  a variety of birds that frequent this neck of the woods.  Ravens, cousin to the smaller crow seen in schoolyards waiting for the inevitable leftovers under swingsets and slides, are common amongst the cedar and pine trees.  Their cackles, croaks and deep throated caws resonate the morning sky even as I write this.  Barred owls turn bedtime stories on their pages when they get going in the darkness.  At a recent fall fair the local wildlife recovery centre had a booth and resting on the arm of a volunteer was a tethered male barred owl who cocked his head and peered down with his liquidy black eyes as my wee lad looked up at him and spoke his language. 
"Hoo...hoo..hooooo......hoo..hoo..are...youuuuuuu..." his little voice cooed as the volunteer beamed. 
"Wonderful!"  he gushed and I could have sworn the owl nodded in agreement.  "That was just perfect."
My big lad can imitate a bald eagle's high pitched whistle so perfectly I 've seen the feathered giants turn their heads to him in mid soar as they pass over our property on their way to the Little Qualicum River when salmon run. 
And I have stepped outside on dewy mornings such as these before the rest of the house wakes up, my steaming mug of tea warming my hands, and managed a bit of back and forth with the ravens that show up around our back property on the lookout for whatever is left behind from whatever the owls were hunting the night before.
The ravens are a big deal on this coast.  First Nation totem poles and artwork are adorned with its image and legends are devoted to this big black bird with a bit of a sinister reputation.  Referred to as an 'unkindness of  ravens' when in a group it's easy to see why the first peoples along this coast felt compelled to carve out its likeness and tell tales of its magic.
My kids are lucky enough to live amongst the magic that is the raven, the bald eagle, the owls, and all the other natural wonders lurking in the forest around them.  The chirping squirrels that leap from branch to branch and drive our dog right round the bend, the laughing woodpecker that jabs away at our maple tree in the back yard, the gentle footsteps of the Island deer as they tentatively venture out of the forest and onto our back property to graze......my kids share their childhood with them all.
It's not all a Snow White/Bambi extravaganza.....we've seen the carnage that is nature at its cruel and finest.
The Thanksgiving weekend when one of our goats was taken from her pen and dragged off by a big black bear who was tired of waiting around for the salmon when they were late coming up river that one year.  Or the night the dog was going nuts in the bush on the other side of my husband's shop.  Throwing on a fleece and my holey-soles I shone the flashlight amongst the trees to see what the fuss was about and saw the glow of eyes just a few yards away from my then pregnant belly.  The dog had treed what we mothers of young children fear most on rural Vancouver Island. The bushes shook as my husband managed to call the dog away and the cougar ran off into the night.
The circle of life lives here on this property.  Life and death has been explained to my wee lad and understood well by my sixteen year old and I am grateful for that although saddened that our poor old goat Lucy had to pay the price for the lesson.
Nature at work explains things a whole lot better than I ever could.  She starts the conversation for me and gets the natural ball rolling in a way no gentlly written library book on death and dying every could.
"That rabbit is dead isn't it Mama?" my wee lad says matter of factly as we come across what's left of an owl's handiwork on the driveway as we take the garbage can to the road.
"Looks like it," I say as I adjust the baby in my front carrier to allow me to drag the can more comfortably.
"The owls need to eat don't they Mama?" he asks plainly.
"Yes...that's right honey," I answer as I pull the dog away before she rolls in the carcass as she so loves to do. No need to clean it up....the ravens will take care of the housekeeping and by lunchtime there won't be a trace to worry about.
I look at my little boy who takes a look at the remains in innocent wonder before moving on to grab at the branches of the pine trees on the edge of the driveway.
"Yup," he says pretty much to himself.  "That owl was hungry."
So...our paradise has it's darkness too and I suppose the natural order of things is it.  I don't expect my kids to feel all warm and fuzzy about death when it touches a family directly but I am thankful that nature has exposed them to the order of things.  Life goes on around them and death is a part of that life.
The owls don't survive without the rabbits and the ravens won't survive without what the owl leaves behind and my kids understand that.  Sometimes it makes them sad but they understand that animals need to hunt to survive.  They also know how to be safe around the bush and to never venture out into it alone.
So I raise my tea mug to  nature on this fine morning and as I sign off here I hear my family getting up out of their beds, the pitter patter of my wee lad's feet on the hardwood, my big lad's stomping around upstairs as he enters his morning shower, my husband's groan and stretch as he head to the coffee maker.  Outside the crow flies....the raven croaks.....the eagle soars.....and life goes on and on.
Until next time.....enjoy the day.....

End of Days....end of summer

Everyone is sleeping in my house...except for me.  I have just crept quietly away from the crib that holds my baby daughter cozy and warm beneath her lilac fleece blanket, my husband breathes evenly from our bed, my wee lad is tucked into his bottom bunk upstairs and my big lad, along with his buddy spending the night this last weekend before school starts, is safe and snoozing in his shack a few steps from the main house.

The last of the supper dishes have been filed into the dishwasher, the last bit of tomato left on the cutting board has been fired into the bucket for the goats, the tv has been turned off.  The house is quiet.....and I sit down to write. 
Today was a good day....a fun day....a favourite kind of day.  I took the two little kids and myself to the Fall Fair. I managed to enter some exhibits, some baking, some pics, some jelly and have some ribbons to show for running around my kitchen stirring and sifting in between rocking and soothing. 
My wee lad brought home some ribbons of his own.  I set him up at the table with some string and a bowl of assorted pasta and fruit loop cereal and he made a necklace.  Most of the cereal ended up in his tummy but his end result was good enough for a blue ribbon.....his first.  The time it took him to put his necklace together allowed me to ice the chocolate cake I had made for the Special Contest exhibit.  A special class devoted to the best Chocolate Layer Cake, a prize that has eluded me in previous years, but not this year.  Big blue ribbon for mama bear......good for us!
It was a great day...a stellar Vancouver Island day.  Temperature in the twenties but a cool and comfortable September breeze on the air, enough to keep the bugs somewhat at bay, although this time of year there's no stopping the wasps.  The end is near for them....they know it....and they're pissed about it.
There were rides at the fair both mechanical and four-footed and my wee lad's head  hit the pillow tonite exhausted from both, his little eyes shining with fun, his memory bank overflowing with bouncy castles and Daisy the cow.
I've always loved fall fairs and try to participate in them, not only for a chance at  ribbons which are always cool, but for the feeling I get heading to the fairgrounds with offerings from my kitchen, my garden, my children's hands and imaginations,from my heart and home. 
Fall fairs are about community and when I am wandering through Domestic Science buildings admiring green beans and  pumpkins, barns filled with dairy cows and  sheep, community halls offering homemade pie and fresh whipping cream.....I feel connected to my community. 
The buzz of conversation has nothing to do with the world at large and everything to do with the world at, and under, one's feet. 

I hear two ladies admiring huge jars of pickled beets and discussing he best way to preserve their colour and flavour, notice children hovering proudly beside their blue-ribbon cookies made from scratch, and compliment the grower of the best looking cabbage I've ever seen.  I admire, I notice and I compliment and my wee lad does the same, like his brother before him when he used to enter his Lego creations in the Junior Arts category, and my heart is big, my stress level is low, and it's all......good.

We are exhausted tonight from a day spent at the country fair and although to many it may seem quaint and antiquated, and rightly so I suppose, I feel like I've shared something real with my family. Something a million miles away from a text message, a video game, a movie or a battery-operated game. 

It's all been real today....real people, real food, real fun.....and really good Chocolate Cake! 

And now I'm real tired......goodnite all.....